eSB: What challenges did you find editing stories for a pre-existing shared universe?

GS: For me, hardest thing about playing in someone else’s world is making sure everything meshes with, in this case, Hal’s vision. We have brought together some very talented people to play in his world. This being a modified version of our world means that the things we take for granted in our modern need to stay consistent story to story. .

eSB: Can you tell us a little bit about your favorite story or stories from the book and why?

GS: My favorite stories involve the human/animal bonds that form after the second moon appears in the sky.

eSB: Sunrise or stargazing?

GS: Definitely Stargazing

eSB: What other projects have you worked on previously?

GS: Stories in Between from Fantasist Enterprises a collection celebrating the 30th anniversary of my bookstore, Between Books, With Great Power from Dark Quest, The Society for the Preservation of C.J. Henderson, The Side of Good/ The Side of Evil from eSpec Books, Arden House by Rob Bryan

eSB: What projects of your own do you have coming up next?

GS: Most of my time is spent working on projects for eSpec, mostly as a copy editor. There a few things of my own in process but none are close to being finished.

Greg Schauer has been a bookseller for over 33 years as the owner of Between Books in Claymont Delaware. He has also helped produce concerts by local and national bands at the Arden Gild Hall in Arden Delaware, one of the country’s oldest continuously run secular utopian art colonies, for the past 10 years. He has previously worked on Stories in Between: the Between Books 30th anniversary anthology with W.H. Horner and Jeanne Benzel, Steampowered Tales of Awesomeness Vol 1 by Brian Thomas and Ray Witte, With Great Power with John L. French, and The Society for the Preservation of CJ Henderson with Danielle Ackley-McPhail. He can be contacted at gschauer@betweenbooks.com.

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eSpec Books interviews Torah Cottrill, contributor to The Awakened Modern, edited by Hal Greenberg and Greg Schauer, which is currently funding on Kickstarter.

eSB: Can you tell us a little about your story, Return of the Devis, from The Awakened Modern?

TC: When Hal Greenberg first suggested that we bring the premise of The Awakened into the 21st century, I wondered how people in the developing world, without access to 24-hour media coverage and with much different cultural lenses, would think about the sudden appearance of individuals with powers. Would they seem like gods, or monsters? Once I found my protagonist, a child with little formal education or knowledge about the world beyond her village, a girl too young for powers, I had a way to tell a story about what watching the world around you blossom with the Awakened might be like, a view from below the clash of powers.

eSB: What do you like most about The Awakened series, and why?

TC: One of the first things that excited me about the series was the fantastic roster of authors already on board. Who wouldn’t want to contribute to an anthology featuring writers like Jaleigh Johnson, Ed Greenwood, and Rosemary Jones? But the aspect of the series that continues to draw me in is the flexibility of the setting, and the number of different stories you can tell about what having a difficult gift, a power, feels like, and how it affects your life and the lives of the people around you.

eSB: What interested you in writing for this series?

TC: With the potential to write a story about characters who have superhuman powers, it’s easy to find yourself writing about spectacular clashes between Awakened, to turn a story into a series of bigger and bigger confrontations, until you’ve turned your story into a series of mind-blowing CGI fights! Those are a lot of fun to write, so part of the challenge of writing for this series is to bring the story back to the characters’ internal conflicts, the struggle to know and understand yourself. I do really enjoy those glorious wuxia ballet fight scenes, though.

eSB: Do you have any plans to expand your story…or write in the same universe? If so, what more can your readers expect?

TC: My stories in Awakened I and II follow one young woman through her awakening in the Frozen Wastes through her impressment into (and escape from) King Stewart’s forces in his push to conquer the Open Lands. Right now, I’m working on a story for Awakened III that explores the cost of using your power in war and the idea that sometimes a power can be more burden than gift.

eSB: If you could have a special power or familiar, what would it be and why?

TC: I’d like to be able to slow time, so I could get everything done in a day that I intend to. Wouldn’t we all?

Torah Cottrill is a professional editor and amateur video gamer whose short stories have appeared in Stupefying Stories, Luna Station Quarterly, Ares Magazine, and Tokyo Yazuka, among other publications. She wastes her free time researching hand-to-hand combat techniques for her novel and failing to complete the seasonal set dungeons in Diablo III.

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eSpec Books interviews Ed Greenwood, contributor to The Awakened Modern, edited by Hal Greenberg and Greg Schauer, which is currently funding on Kickstarter.

eSB: What kind of challenges did you find writing for this series?

EG: Cutting back on my natural urges to write madly off in all directions, detailing lots of territory and writing about the intertwined lives and subplots of a huge cast of characters. I cut down to a single focus, and had fun that way, instead.

eSB: What interested you in writing for this series?

EG: Hal Greenberg asked me to, I thought the central idea was fun, and I liked my co-contributors…and have liked them more with each GenCon breakfast with them I’ve managed to attend. It’s been a blast so far!

eSB: If you could have a special power or familiar, what would it be and why?

EG: I would want the special power of being able to stop time (with objects frozen in mid-fall, cars and people in mid-rush, and so on) so I could improve my failing-with-age powers of doing sixteen things at once. Without dropping anything.

eSB: Sunrise or stargazing?

EG: Both. As a writer and late-night reader, I see the stars often. And as a husband with a day job and a wife to care for, I see the sunrise all too often!

eSB: What are some of your own works readers can look for?

EG: As a young boy, I created the Forgotten Realms fantasy setting, later adopted as the “world” of the Dungeons & Dragons game, and have published over 20 Realms novels. I’ve also written five Aglirta novels about The Band of Four, a Falconfar trilogy, a Niflheim duology, a steampunk novel entitled The Iron Assassin, and many more; I’ve written, co-written, or contributed to over 300 books thus far. Yes, my house is groaningly crammed full of books. And I’m taking it easy, these days: I’m writing only a novel a month.

eSB: What projects of your own do you have coming up?

EG: I’ve started a new transmedia publishing venture, The Ed Greenwood Group, for creatives interested in working in new genre settings I’m creating, such as Hellmaw (daemons lurking among us on Earth, who consider us food; dark urban fantasy); Stormtalons (a medieval-cum Renaissance world in which a tyrant archwizard tries to control other wizards, and is defied by priests of the Six gods, as magical mists, the Stormtalons, ravage the world, and the mighty Sleeping Dragons stir; high fantasy), and almost 30 other settings.

Ed Greenwood is a New York Times-bestselling Canadian writer, game designer, and librarian best known for creating The Forgotten Realms® fantasy world fifty years ago. His 350-plus books have sold millions of copies worldwide in more than three dozen languages. Ed was elected to the Academy of Adventure Gaming Art & Design Hall of Fame in 2003, and has won multiple ENNIE and Origins and other awards. Through The Ed Greenwood Group, he now helms many shared storytelling worlds he’s created; they can be found at OnderLibrum.com

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This is a part of our series of excerpts connected with our campaign for The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries. All of the authors have been selected based on fan and reviewer recognition as some of the best examples of Bad-Ass Faeries, representing over a decade of this award-winning series. If you are interested in learning more about The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, please check out our Kickstarter. #Make100

Selk-Skin Deep

Kelly A. Harmon

Cade Owen stood on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Livingstone, watching the crew of an ammunition ship loading armaments on board. The night sea cooperated. Gentle waves in the Gulf of Tonkin lapped at the two navy vessels. Men from the other ship, the USS Redoubt, sent over bomb after bomb until a crewman from the Livingstone pointed to a large wooden crate and made a cutting motion with his hands, halting the transfer.

Cade itched to know what the man’s agitation signaled. But from this distance, and under these lighting conditions, he couldn’t make out the problem. The carrier needed those munitions. Without them, the fighter jets couldn’t make their ordered strafing runs north of Hanoi in the morning, and he couldn’t rendezvous with the other SEALs later in the week with the Biet Hai Commandos in Da Nang.

Thank Manannán mac Lir. And President Kennedy, he thought, who created the SEALs only recently. He hoped this special mission would grant him a reprieve from the boredom his nearly immortal life provided him, even if he had to live among humans to find surcease. Humans weren’t a bad sort; he just couldn’t fathom why they seemed to live their lives so intensely.

Didn’t they realize that life is a series of up and down cycles? What made it so hard for them to accept that and move on? How can there be anything worth fighting over—dying over—when all things circle back in the ebb and flow of life?

He would love to discuss it with Friedman, but that would mean telling Friedman his bunkmate wasn’t human. Perhaps they’d known each long enough to swim that current. Long days confined together with the threat of war hanging over their heads had shaped their friendship far more quickly than a casual friendship might have. He’d give it some thought.

Until then, he would observe their intensity first hand. For now, he was just another man on the ship. And if he died serving? More the better, for it gave his life a purpose: something more than living and dying with the sea; yet, still living and dying by the sea.

The trident insignia of the Navy SEALs on his lapel gleamed in the moonlight. The brooding look on his face took on a more thoughtful aspect. He reached within his coveralls and pulled a small, rolled fur from around his neck. Shaking out the seal-shaped pelt, he moved into the darker shadow cast by an F4 Phantom and stripped out of his clothes. He draped the skin over his shoulders, letting the length of it drape down his back. Then, he grabbed the edges, pulling and tugging, smoothing the skin around himself until it grew large enough to cover him, turning him into a seal.

In an instant, the darkness disappeared, and Cade could see almost as well as if there were daylight. He opened his mouth, tasting the salty tang of the ocean on his tongue. He drew in a large breath, savoring the smell. He had waiting too long to return to true form. It always felt this way to him, after the change, like the sea wooed him back. If he were his human self, he would have smiled from the pleasure of it.

He dove into the water, falling forty feet through the air, cutting into the sea in a graceful arc. He plunged deep into the water, then surfaced and made his way around the side of the carrier and closer to the argument.

Kelly A. Harmon used to write truthful, honest stories about authors and thespians, senators and statesmen, movie stars and murderers. Now she writes lies, which is infinitely more satisfying, but lacks the convenience of doorstep delivery. She is an award-winning journalist and author, and a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America. A Baltimore native, she writes the Charm City Darkness series, which includes the novels Stoned in Charm City, A Favor for a Fiend, and the soon to be published, A Blue Collar Proposition. Her science fiction and fantasy stories can be found in Triangulation: Dark Glass, Hellebore and Rue, and Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace and Misery.

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eSpec Books interviews Jody Lynn Nye, contributor to The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, currently funding on Kickstarter as a part of the #Make100 campaign.

eSB: What is your idea of a bad-ass faerie?

JLN: Faeries are tough, because they have to be. They are a part of raw nature, which doesn’t suffer fools or forgive, but at the same time, is entirely impersonal. The fact that faeries have personalities makes it all the more interesting when they intersect with humans. We have all these expectations, of faeries granting wishes, or being a sweet little companion on our travels in the outer wilderness, but what do you do if the faerie in question hasn’t read the story you did?

eSB: Can you tell us a little about your story, “Fifteen Percent”, that was selected for The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries?

JLN: “Fifteen Percent” is about a writer in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and his muse/agent, a filandiere named Ninette. Marcel isn’t the most conscientious person in the world. In a way, he does live for his art, because when he’s not writing, he’s just not taking care of himself. Ninette makes sure that he works and reaps all the benefits of his work. In exchange, she takes the standard agent’s cut of fifteen percent of the gross. In this case, the fifteen percent means a cut from every part of the creative writing. Filandieres consume the energy from creative endeavors. Marcel comes to realize that by her nature she diminishes the very work that she is plugging to New York editors, and resents the hell out of it. On the other hand, what choice does he have? It’s a devil’s bargain. Marcel has access to the mystical side of life, which inspires him to write great things. Ninette feeds from his work.

I had never heard of filandieres before I chose them from the list of spirit faeries, but they sounded so interesting. With a French name, the setting just chose itself. It had to take place in New Orleans and the surrounding environs. In Louisiana, all these creatures exist just beneath the surface of normality. In the city, in the bayou, in every small town, there are legends. Some are benevolent, but most are dark and dangerous. Marcel’s and Ninette’s relationship is one of abusive co-dependence, but I found it touching and funny at the same time.

eSB: What would your fae character’s signature drink be and why?

JLN: Hurricane. Of course. Ninette could ride the real whirlwind if she wanted to.

eSB: What kind of challenges did you find writing for this series?

JLN: Finding any information at all about filandieres. They were unfamiliar to me. Danielle gave me a link to Monstropedia.org, but that was the only location I have found the name, and that website has disappeared.

eSB: What is your first recollection of faeries growing up?

JLN: Probably the same as most American kids: Tinkerbell. I thought she was fascinating. She was so jealous of Peter Pan’s relationship with Wendy, or anyone else who took attention away from her. She was adorable, but she could be downright mean. After that, I found lots of references to faeries in literature and the movies. Pinocchio’s Blue Faerie was a benevolent presence. I loved Cinderella’s Faerie Godmother.

eSB: Do you have any plans to expand your story…or write in the same universe? If so, what more can your readers expect?

JLN: I hadn’t thought about it, but following Marcel, a very ordinary human with an extraordinary imagination and talent, able to trip into mystical surroundings with the help of his faerie agent could be a lot of fun.

eSB: What are some of your own works readers can look for?

JLN: My website is www.jodylynnnye.com. I have lots of books. My current series, the Lord Thomas Kinago books from Baen, is like PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster, but in space. Thomas is an over-privileged, wealthy aristocrat with a good heart but far too much imagination and time on his hands. Parsons, his ‘aide-de-camp,’ helps to keep him out of trouble, most of the time.

eSB: What projects of your own do you have coming up?

JLN: In July, the first of my collaborations with Travis Taylor is coming out. Moon Beam is a hard SF novel for young adults. Set on the Moon, it follows six young scientists working on awesome projects, like building a space telescope out of an existing crater. We want to get young people thinking they can become involved in STEM projects.

eSB: How can readers find out more about you?

JLN: Visit my website, check in with me on social media, or come up and talk to me at conventions.

Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as ‘spoiling cats.’ When not engaged upon this worthy occupation, she writes fantasy and science fiction books and short stories.

Since 1987 she has published over 45 books and more than 150 short stories.

Her newest series is the Lord Thomas Kinago books, beginning with View From the Imperium (Baen Books), a humorous military SF novel. Her newest books are Rhythm of the Imperium, third in the Lord Thomas Kinago series; an e-collection of cat stories, Cats Triumphant! (Event Horizon), Wishing on a Star, part of the Stellar Guild series, with Angelina Adams, (Arc Manor Press) and a collection of holiday stories, A Circle of Celebrations (WordFire Press) , and her novella in the second in the Clan of the Claw series, Tooth and Claw.

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This is a part of our series of excerpts connected with our campaign for The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries. All of the authors have been selected based on fan and reviewer recognition as some of the best examples of Bad-Ass Faeries, representing over a decade of this award-winning series. If you are interested in learning more about The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, please check out our Kickstarter. #Make100

The Natural-Born Spy

James Daniel Ross

Some things are too close for a normal man to focus on at the time. Only decades after November, 1944, can I look back and realize the small stones in the road that diverted our lives so immensely. I could never know that when I walked into the professor’s office at Boston College I was to begin a journey that would lead me to places I never imagined existed.

I was sitting at the desk, pads of paper thrown out across the surface like machinegun fire, books opened to select pages and marked with new pads, pens, and other books. There was a quick rap on the door, and then it opened with a swing that spoke of impatient authority.

The man who entered was tall and straight, or maybe pressed. Yes, that was it: The man gave out an impression that if he were rolled over Niagara Falls inside a wooden barrel he would come out with every bone broken—but every crease of his suit intact. The man practically had starch in his walk and his shoes were shined to blinding brightness. The instant he entered the room, his free hand snatched the hat from his head, exposing only a furtive bristle of hair. His lantern jaw screwed his teeth more tightly together and his eyes narrowed as they took me in. In the non-hat hand there was a book, which he now pointed at me in accusation. “You’re not Professor Levi Stein.”

I blinked at him twice, swallowing hard as his disapproval smacked me across the face. “Um, no. I’m sorry. I noticed the appointment in the book for you, Mr. Smith. There was no telephone number so I decided to wait here to explain why the professor—”

Smith ducked his head out into the hallway, scanning both ways quickly before retreating back into the office and shutting the door. Then he spun on me, his eyes as hard and cold as nails. “Where is the professor?”

I cleared my throat, fighting the tears trying to well up, “The professor is indisposed.”

“How indisposed?”

Then I had to grab a kerchief from my pack and dab at my eyes. “Permanently, sir.”

Smith glanced at the door darkly, but it was a moment or two before I heard a pair of shoes walk innocently by. He then turned back to me. “Who are you?”

“My name is Bruce Andrew.”

He tossed his Stetson on the desk and leaned on the free hand, looming over me and—now I am convinced—reading everything exposed in an instant. “You’re the professor’s star pupil.”

Maybe it was how quickly he dismissed the news of the professor’s death, or maybe how successful he was at intimidating me in a place I had come to regard as a home. Whatever it was, it gave me a little steel of my own, which I threw into my voice, waving my paring knife in front of his broadsword. “That’s right.”

He tossed the book, thick, heavy, and at least two centuries old, down in front of me. “Can you translate Occitan?”

“Of course.”

The grin on his face was not friendly or encouraging. “The pages are marked.”

“And why should I?”

He glared at me as if I were a toy poodle barking at him from the safety of a rich woman’s arms. Then he took out his billfold and pulled out five large bills as crisp as his pants. They fluttered to the desk carelessly, but when they landed they sounded like gold bars to me.

I only let them breathe there for a minute before snatching them up and stowing them in my front pocket. I opened the heavy tome, and saw page after page of pen-work easily dating back to the sixteenth century. Still his demeanor and the heavy bills in my pocket brooked no questions. I could only manage, “This will take a while.”

He leaned in the corner and crossed his arms. “I’ll wait.”

And wait he did, though the longer I moved words across time and languages, the more I smiled inside at his foolishness. It was well past midnight by the time I put down my pen and handed him the sheet. I allowed myself a little smile as he took it. “No hidden treasure map there, sorry.”

I started gathering my own papers into organized piles as he devoured every syllable I had recorded. Only once he was done did he refocus on me, eyes sharp. “Did you understand anything about this?”

I rolled my eyes and shoved my own books into my knapsack, leaving the one he had brought conspicuously alone. “I did an undergraduate paper on medieval belief in faeries and their ilk. They’re really little gods and every culture has had them, like the house gods of Roman times—”

Smith made a motion like swatting away a lethargic fly. “You’re an expert in myths and legends, then?”

I shrugged. “Myths, legends, and I read a half a dozen dead languages.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Star pupil, indeed.”

I nodded once, chin set.

He snatched up his book, translated pages folded within, retrieved his hat and nodded a thanks as he opened the door to leave. He paused. “Have you ever thought about joining the army?”

I hated that question, and it had been asked often the last three years. I did feel some need to go serve my country, and lord knows there were no more evil forces on the planet than Hitler and Tojo. Still, I was tall but thin, with an Adam’s apple of prodigious size. My eyes were more attuned to reading letters than searching out Nazis. In fact, if there was someone less suited to armed conflict than I was, I had never met him. I just was not a soldier. I didn’t know Smith, didn’t much like him, and I never planned to ever see him again. So I settled on a terse, “No.” without regard to what he might think of me.

Then he left, and I locked up the professor’s office for the night. I went to his funeral the next Sunday. He was buried next to his wife in a beautiful ceremony. I stood by his grave for a very long time after.

The next day I received my draft notice. I tried to argue the point to anyone who would listen, but all I got were disapproving looks and olive drab walls funneling me into boot camp, where time ceased to have any meaning. I felt extra eyes on me the entire time, and extra attention paid to my training.

If you are thinking loving, paternal attention, think again. I was horribly out of shape, grotesquely inadequate with a weapon, and almost died on the first three-mile run. I could never keep my uniform clean enough. I was never able to properly express my ferocity. I never knew the right answers. I once stabbed a dummy with a bayonet and immediately fell over backward. I once passed out doing push-ups. The ten-mile marches were almost a death sentence. Let me be clear: I was a fantastic researcher, and an excellent linguist, but at six feet and one hundred and ten pounds, a hard-charging, bullet-chewing, Nazi-throttling grunt I was not.

It was something my drill sergeant never let me forget. He called me Ichabod . . . as in Crane. I was just glad they never found a pumpkin to throw at me as I suffered through the five-mile runs. Then, one night, I was pulled out of bed without warning. My scream turned into a cough as someone lovingly toed me in the solar plexus, emptying my lungs in one, fell whoosh. I tried to call upon my inadequately learned training and lashed out with hands and feet, earning a slap. My head was spinning as they efficiently shoved a cotton gag in my mouth, trussed me up with rough rope, yanked a bag over my head, and hustled me into the frigid night.

The Radiation Angels: The Chimerium Gambit is his first novel and is followed by The Radiation Angels: The Key to Damocles. He is also the author of I Know Not, The Whispering of Dragons(with Neal Levin,) and The Last Dragoon. Snow and Steel is his first sojourn into historical fiction. James Daniel Ross shares a Dream Realm Award with the other others in Breach the Hull, and an EPPIE award with the others appearing in Bad Ass Faeries 2.

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eSpec Books interviews Patrick Thomas, contributor to The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries, edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail, currently funding on Kickstarter as a part of the #Make100 campaign.

eSB: What is your idea of a bad-ass faerie?

Patrick Thomas: Danielle Ackley-McPhail, the godmother of the series, would certainly seem to qualify as the archetype of a bad-ass faerie. And a bad-ass editor too.

eSB: Can you tell us a little about your story, Looking a Gift Horse, that was selected for The Best of Bad-Ass Faeries?

Patrick Thomas: It takes Terrorbelle – who was in the original Bad-Ass Faeries in a story set in modern day New York City – back to her days in Faerie. She’s just a kid and yet not the accomplished soldier she grows up to be. She has to depend more on her wits than her brawn to survive the attentions of a killer soldier and a deadly Aughisky, a breed of water horse.

eSB: What would your fae character’s signature drink be and why?

Patrick Thomas: She likes beer, but she might enjoy a Pink Lady as it would match her hair.

eSB: What do you like most about The Bad-Ass Faeries series, and why?

Patrick Thomas: The variety of the characters and the settings of the stories is amazing. So many authors contributing so many different yet enjoyable tales.

eSB: What kind of challenges did you find writing for this series?

Patrick Thomas: Right before the events in Looking a Gift Horse, Terrorbelle had suffered a traumatic and life changing event and is seeking revenge, but is only 11 years old. It was a challenge to try to coincide with the rawness and youth of the story with her older more confident self.

eSB: What is your first recollection of faeries growing up?

Patrick Thomas: Well, probably Tinkerbelle in Peter Pan- I saw the show on Broadway when I was a kid. And stories of leprechauns, which in an Irish family isn’t that unusual.

eSB: What interested you in writing for this series?

Patrick Thomas: Danielle Ackley-Mcphail and I were in the Dark Furies anthology and she asked me if I’d be interested in writing a Terrorbelle story for the first Bad-Ass Faeries. I jumped at the chance.

eSB: Tell us something about yourself that is bad-ass.

Patrick Thomas: I could tell you, but then… Naw.

eSB: Do you have any plans to expand your story…or write in the same universe? If so, what more can your readers expect?

Patrick Thomas: Terrorbelle has two books of her own – Fairy With A Gun (a collection of short stories that was once optioned by Laurence Fishburne’s Cinema Gypsy Productions for film and TV) and Fairy Rides The Lightning (a murder mystery in Valhalla that is not solved in time could lead to Ragnorak). Stories of Terrorbelle’s younger years in Faerie will be collected soon with a cover by the legendary Daniel Horne and her adventures take place in the Murphy’s Lore universe.

eSB: What are some of your own works readers can look for?

Patrick Thomas: The Murphy’s Lore and Startenders series, paranormal mysteries Lore & Dysorder (starring Hell’s Detective), Dead To Rites and Rites of Passage (starring Agent Karver of The Department of Mystic Affairs), the steampunk As The Gears Turn and the many Dear Cthulhu advice books.

eSB: What projects of your own do you have coming up?

Patrick Thomas: A new Dear Cthulhu collection, a collection and novel featuring Hex and a Soul For Hire collection.

Patrick Thomas has had stories published in over three dozen magazines and more than fifty anthologies. He’s written 30+ books including the fantasy humor series Murphy’s Lore, urban fantasy spin offs Fairy With A Gun, Fairy Rides The Lightning, Dead To Rites, Rites of Passage, Lore & Dysorder and two more in the Startenders series. He co-writes the Mystic Investigatorsparanormal mystery series and The Assassins’ Ball, a traditional mystery, co-authored with John L. French. His darkly humorous advice column Dear Cthulhu includes the collections Have A Dark Day, Good Advice For Bad People, and Cthulhu Knows Best. His latest collection is the Steampunk themed As The Gears Turn. A number of his books were part of the props department of the CSI television show and one was even thrown at a suspect. Fairy With A Gun was optioned by Laurence Fishburne’s Cinema Gypsy Productions. Act of Contrition, a story featuring his Soul For Hire hitman is in development as a short film by Top Men Productions. Drop by www.patthomas.net to learn more.